Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Other Books
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Bio
Acknowledgements
Thank you
Painting Rain
Annette K. Larsen
Copyright © 2016 Annette K. Larsen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1523766409
ISBN-13: 978-1523766406
Also by Annette K. Larsen
Just Ella
Missing Lily
Saving Marilee
For anyone who’s ever struggled to be extraordinary.
Chapter One
THE FIRST TIME I saw Tobias, he winked from across the ballroom floor. I turned around, trying to see who it was he had winked at before the realization hit that it was me. He was winking at me, and all of my carefully practiced decorum flew away. My entire body flushed and my chest filled with a heat that was unfamiliar and exhilarating. I fidgeted in a completely uncivilized manner, my eyes darting to my dress and my hands and the people around me. When I dredged up the courage to look at him, the roguish smile and the sharp glint in his eye told me the wink had been no mistake. He stared at me, holding me captive in his gaze despite dancers swirling in and out of our view. My heartbeat increased as he took a sip from his goblet, his eyes fixed on mine over the rim. My pulse took off at a gallop when he began walking, making his way around the periphery of the room, his end goal unmistakable. His hair was jet black, his sideburns long, his chin angular and confident.
The tempo of my breathing would have been humiliating if I had been able to spare a thought for it. As it was, he commanded every bit of my attention. He didn’t stop a few paces away and bow. No, instead he came so close that I could feel the heat coming from him even before he picked up my hand and brought it to his lips.
“Dance with me.”
I nodded and managed not to trip over my own feet as he led me into the throng. I didn’t think to ask if he had a title, if he fit my idea of a worthy match. I simply let myself fall.
Even after I found out how unworthy he was, I allowed it to continue. I let him skim his fingertips along my wrist and whisper in my ear that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. Every attention I welcomed with open arms, hungry for it, yet never satisfied. We wrote letters, and despite his volatile temper, the words he put to paper were gentle and poetic, even soothing. My future marriage had already been arranged, but I called it harmless flirting, all in good fun.
But it hadn’t all been fun. And it certainly wasn’t harmless.
That first meeting had been almost two years ago. He had branded himself on my heart, then led me through a love affair so fraught with erratic highs and drowning lows that I still bore the scars.
Today I was determined to do something about those scars.
The vase atop my mantel stood still and unthreatening, but it was the missive that lay beneath that stiffened my shoulders and made my jaw clench. The letter had been there for the past ten months. It had first been handed to me by my guard, West, only hours after Tobias died. It had been crumpled, the edge soaked in red. My guard had placed it in my palm and I had merely stood there, my hand flat, staring at the paper that carried the crimson evidence of his death, afraid to close my hand around it, sure that somehow the action would make it more real. If I accepted that this folded square bearing my name was the last communication I would ever have from Tobias—that there would be no more chances, no hope for redemption, no possibility of an apology—I would come undone. So I had stared, resenting the finality that it represented until slowly, my trembling fingers closed over it, taking possession.
I had felt my guard’s eyes on me. He had waited for me to crumble. But I had spent the better part of the previous hours keening to the sky and had only just regained my composure. I could not lose my senses again. Fighting for control had been my only course, so I’d clutched the letter to my chest, its edges digging into my hand, and walked away.
I had kept it with me for days, working up the courage to read it. But I never could. Each time I pulled it out, all I could see was the stained edge, once a bright red, now turning a rusty brown, and I couldn’t open it, because once the words were read there would be no more. I had finally resigned myself to leaving it unread and had relegated it to the spot above my fireplace, covered by a heavy vase where it would be safe but out of sight.
Now, nearly ten months after his death, I scooted the vase aside, the sound of it scraping against stone harsh and jarring. I picked up the letter, holding it lightly in my fingers as if it might poison me. It was small. I shouldn’t be afraid of something so small. My fear used to stem from the finality of his last words. Now I feared that the contents of Tobias’s last letter to me would not live up to my expectation. Tobias had always held the power, not only to charm me, but to hurt me. Because I had loved him, despite his arrogance, despite his tendency to mock and be cruel. We had understood one another.
It wasn’t until later that I realized what that must mean about me—that the bond I felt with him was a condemnation of my character, a character I had developed long before he came along. A character I had taken pride in because I believed that rigid obedience to rules and setting myself above others was necessary to prove myself. It took Tobias’s death to make me see the flaw in that belief. But I didn’t merely see it; I felt that condemnation settle on my soul and demand repair.
I had spent the time since then doing my utmost to change myself. I had to be constantly on guard, ready to curb my tongue and soften my language. I used to speak without realizing the damage I caused, but now I knew I didn’t want to hurt people. I didn’t want to inflict the kind of cruelty that had become second nature for me.
My endeavor to change was working. I had slowly been able to let go of my need for perfection in so many ways. Though I still found it a bit of a struggle to accept my own shortcomings, I was far from the person I had been a year ago.
Yet Tobias’s letter still loomed, and I knew that I needed to separate myself from my memory of him, and to do that I had to read his words so that the uncertainty of what this letter contained would stop haunting me. So I broke the seal, unfolding it as the crackling of parchment scraped against my ears, until his words lay out in the open before me.
Raina,
This is the end for me. I tried to be enough for you, but our families were determined to get in the way.
I’m so tired of giving up everything to my brother. Everyone deemed Rhys more deserving and I put up with it all my life.
Then he had you and I lost my mind.
It was bad enough that you accepted your betrothal to my own brother, but even after he rejected you, you still listened to the poison he and your sister spouted against me.
I’m hoping that if only I have a chance to talk to you, to remind you of all that we’ve shared, you might remember. But perhaps that’s impossible. perhaps I can’t ever be good enough.
I think I loved you too much, Raina. I loved y
ou more than I should have been able and I was so used to being selfish, so used to looking out for only me and my interests, that when I started to care about you, I didn’t know how to make room for you. Yet I couldn’t let you go, either. And I shouldn’t have to let you go. I know I didn’t deserve you, that I never could be worthy of having you. You said it time and time again, but I wish I had been able to convince you that if you only gave me a chance, we both would have been able to love enough.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be better for you. You were the only one I ever wanted to be better for. Even so, I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for everything.
Tobias
I let the parchment fall from my hand. It was just like him to write such an unsatisfying apology. He blamed Lylin and Rhys for my opinion of him instead of realizing his own culpability. He spoke of wanting to be better and not being able. But I didn’t believe that. I had always believed he could be better. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, it was that he wouldn’t. As much as he spoke about loving me, I had never actually been enough to inspire him to change.
The day he died had been chaos. Our relationship had imploded months before, leaving me determined to stay away from him, but unaccountably missing him at the same time. Tobias had drawn me in so fully that letting go of him wasn’t as simple as opening my fist. It was slow and arduous; like a surgeon with a knife, I had been forced to carve him from my heart. Perhaps that’s why I had wanted to believe him. He’d been irrational when he held his brother captive, but his note to Lylin that day had claimed that all he wanted to do was speak to me. He said he only wanted that chance, and then he would leave for good.
I had chosen to believe him, partly because he hadn’t given us a choice, and partly because I wanted him to prove that he really had loved me, that he could be the man I wanted him to be. Instead we’d fought, like so many times before. He had pleaded, threatened, cried, lashed out, turned his back in defeat, and even attacked my sister. We had been fools, Lylin and I, to believe that we could fix the situation. I had been a fool to claim that he would never hurt me. How wrong I had been. He’d hurt both of us. I had walked into that abandoned fortress where his brother was shackled to the wall and expected him to be rational, though all the evidence suggested otherwise. It had fallen apart, as was inevitable, and then he had lowered his sword and tried to walk away.
I stalked after Tobias. “That’s all?” I screamed at him. “That’s all you have to say to me? After everything you’ve done, you really have nothing else to say?”
He turned back to me, looking small and tired, defeated. “It’s not going to make any difference. I am lucid enough to know that.”
My eyes stung with tears, realizing he would rather turn himself into some sort of martyr than confess to any kind of truth. “It might not make a difference to you, but it means something to me. You mean something to me, and I want to hear something!” I wouldn’t let him simply walk away. He had to give me something. “Some explanation, some regret, some apology! For once, Tobias, be a man and think of someone other than yourself!”
Even my cruel words didn’t break his defeated posture. “By the time the sun sets, anything that you and I ever shared will be gone.”
I hated his words because I knew the truth of them. My father’s knights would be upon us at any moment. He had hurt Lylin and knew his life was forfeit.
“It’s already shattered beyond repair,” he continued. “And that’s my fault. Don’t think that I don’t know that, because I do.”
I blinked in surprise, shocked that he would take ownership of the flaws in our relationship.
“I did this to us.” He jabbed a fist into his chest, branding himself with the blame. “I broke us. You want words, but words won’t change what we are. My words won’t mean anything when I’m dead.”
“They’ll mean everything!” I cried, pressing my own hand to my heart where his words had already settled, the truth about his impending demise searing my insides, making me sick and hurt and aching. “Because they’ll be the only thing I have!” Tears choked my words and I fell silent, waiting to see if he would for once think of my needs over his own.
And he did. His face softened and he smiled just a little, his eyes searching mine, trying to truly see me as he asked, “Then what shall I say? What words shall I gift to you?”
What did I want? What words would I wish for when he was gone? Because he would be gone. I knew he couldn’t survive this day. “Truth, Tobias,” I said as tears coursed down my cheeks, mourning what I’d already lost, what I knew I would lose. “I just want truth. Any truth. Any piece of you that is real.” Because I had never known. I had never been able to decipher which parts of him were authentic and which were for show. “That’s what I want. Give me that.”
His eyes filled with a warmth that reminded me of why I had been drawn to him in the first place. “I wanted to be better,” he confessed. “For you, I wanted to be better.”
I sucked in a breath, but it hitched and caught.
“Any unselfish thought, any thoughtful deed, any moment of content I ever had…”
My breath held in my lungs as my heart reached out for his words.
“Every good part of me belongs to you.” He gestured toward me with the sword still clutched in his hand.
I sighed and closed my eyes for merely a moment, sealing his words in my heart. I felt the beginnings of a smile as I opened my eyes, and I saw his own lips start to turn up just a bit.
And then the twang of an arrow being loosed reached my ears at the same moment that Tobias stumbled back, an arrow imbedded in his shoulder. A wave of shock hit me, stopping the air I needed, making my throat and lungs convulse. My father’s knights had arrived just as Tobias had so casually lifted his sword to point at me.
“NOOOO!” I screamed as his horrified gaze pulled from mine and dropped to the shaft protruding from his shoulder. No. Not now. Not now, please not now! I was barely aware of the mounted knights that poured in through the gate, each with bows and arrows trained on Tobias. I took two lurching steps toward him before someone’s arms grabbed me around the waist, pulling me away from him, forcing me to leave him at the mercy of my father’s elite soldiers. I pushed at the hands that held me, fighting to get closer to him, to save him. The hands let go and I made it three steps before two guards took hold of my arms and forced me away—pulled me to a safe distance where I was able to watch, my eyes wide, my throat raw with screaming as Tobias fought.
He kept his word. He had said he would fight to the end and he did. He never gave them the chance to show mercy, instead forcing their hand by swinging his blade one-handed at every man that came close to him.
And then it was over. And Tobias was dead. I fell to my knees, my hands pressed to the dirt, hearing nothing but my own wailing as strong arms tried to support me, or hold me together, or keep me from crawling toward him. And I couldn’t look away. And his eyes never blinked. And I couldn’t breathe.
Chapter Two
I PICKED UP the letter, my hands fisting, crumpling the parchment that carried his last words, then ripped it to pieces and tossed it aside. I was done with it. I wanted to be done with him, free of him, so I shook out my hands and turned my back on the strewn pieces before calling my lady’s maid, Sarah, to help me ready for the day.
Sarah entered with a smile. “Morning, Princess.”
I forced a smile in return. “Good morning, Sarah. I’ll be going for a carriage ride this morning.”
She bent her head in acknowledgement and crossed to my wardrobe. “A simple dress and sturdy arrangement of your hair, then?”
I gave a nod, determined to get out of the castle, away from the memories of Tobias dredged up by his letter. I was going for a carriage ride through the countryside. As the only unmarried princess—and practically a spinster at twenty-two years old—my parents were inclined to let me run my own life so long as my guards trailed me. There had been too many close calls with my other
sisters for them to believe I would be safe without protection. So it was easy to call on a carriage and go on my way with only my two guards, Stephen and West.
I stepped out the door and paused a moment to breathe the warm air and check my gloves. I was surprised when West approached me. He bowed with a deferential, “Your Highness.”
“What is it?” I asked.
He fixed his gaze on me. “Are you well?”
I was ready to dismiss his question, but his expression suggested that he had reason to be concerned. “What makes you ask that?”
“Sarah found a shredded letter in your room. She thinks it upset you.”
I pulled back, startled by the reminder. Part of me wanted to tell him about it, but I didn’t want to infringe upon him. “Yes, well. Everything is fine.” I moved toward the carriage, but he touched my arm for a barely discernible moment, bringing my attention back to him.
“Is someone threatening you?”
His concern touched me, even though I knew it was his job to ask such questions. Still, I hated to think that any of my personal struggles were being discussed, even if it was between my lady’s maid and my guard, both of whom I trusted. “No.” His worry remained, so I decided to be more honest. “It was an old letter. The one…that you found when…”
He stepped back and bowed his head. “Yes, of course, Princess.”
I let out a silent breath, relieved he had so readily dropped the subject. He must know how difficult it still was for me to speak of Tobias. He’d been my guard since I was a teenager and knew me better than I would have preferred. perhaps it was the fact that, at twenty-seven, he was only five years my senior, but I hated the thought of him seeing past my defenses. It was disconcerting.
He helped me into the carriage without another word, pushing my skirts inside before closing the door. His eyes strayed to my face just before he turned away, but I saw the worry there. I shook off the odd feeling that knowledge gave me and looked across the carriage to be sure that my case of drawing supplies had been stowed away.
Painting Rain (Books of Dalthia Book 4) Page 1
